Hotel Living? - How to Save Money Instead of Eating Out

While staying in a hotel, one can certainly find it hard to refrain from eating out all the time. It may be that you live in a hotel or that you travel so much, it's the same as hotel living. Luckily the hotel that my son and I are currently in provides a miniature refrigerator and a microwave. Add my sandwich maker to these items, and we're talking gourmet possibilities.

If you're staying in a hotel for an extended amount of time and your room doesn't include such amenities, it may be cheaper to go buy these items than it would be to eat out during your stay. They will make your hotel living much more endurable. A mini-fridge can be found for about $100 (new), and microwaves can be found for as cheap as $30. It may be that you can search classified ads and find a used mini-fridge even cheaper.

There are more options available for eating without a stove or oven than one might think.

Below are some food items that have become a regular part of our diet. If you still feel you need a stove, you can always buy a camping stove to use outside of your hotel.

Bars and Crunchies

It's always good to have a handful of snacks available, especially when you have kids. Granola bars, Goldfish, Trail Mix, Cheese and Crackers are good healthy alternatives to chips, cookies and other snacks that are high in fat or sugar content and beat running to the vending machines that are your usual options when hotel living.

Fruits

As long as you'll eat them in a timely manner, fruits are easy to keep around the room. You don't want to deal with the smell of rotten bananas or apples, though. Bananas, apples, raisins, oranges are all items that you can keep in your room to snack on when you're hungry.

Ramen Noodles

That's right. The college student and bachelor favorite now comes in microwavable lunch cups. Microwave water and add it to the styrofoam cup for the basic meal that has kept college students alive for years.

Non Frozen Microwavable Meals

While many microwavable meals are frozen, there are a few such as Compleats that are able to sit around a hotel room without refrigeration. Just pop them in the microwave for a meal.

Canned Goods

I absolutely hate hand held can openers, so I spent the ten bucks to get an electric can opener. I have probably spent at least twice that much on hand held can openers over the years as they broke, fell apart, or stopped working. Canned veggies, tuna fish, soups, pasta, and other canned goods are all foods that can be stored in a hotel room and popped into the microwave in a microwave safe bowl.

Lunchmeats

We're vegetarians, so cheese, meat alternatives, or peanut butter and jelly are our sandwich choices, but lunchmeats are easily stored in the minifridge for meat eaters that find themselves living in hotels.

Be sure to keep some tupperware or other type of containers on hand that you can save leftovers while experiencing hotel living. These can be used for your own leftovers or when you break down and visit a restaurant. They can be arranged nicely in your mini fridge better than the large bulbous styrofoam containers from restaurants.